Color vision defects (CVDs) are conditions characterized by the alteration of normal trichromatic vision. CVDs can arise as the result of alterations in three genes (
,
,
) or as a combination of ...genetic predisposition and environmental factors. To date, apart from Mendelian CVDs forms, nothing is known about multifactorial CVDs forms.
Five hundred and twenty individuals from Silk Road isolated communities were genotyped and phenotypically characterized for CVDs using the Farnsworth D-15 color test. The CVDs traits Deutan-Protan (DP) and Tritan (TR) were analysed. Genome Wide Association Study for both traits was performed, and results were corrected with a False Discovery Rate linkage-based approach (FDR-p). Gene expression of final candidates was investigated using a published human eye dataset, and pathway analysis was performed.
Concerning DP, three genes:
(FDR-p: 9.01*10
),
(FDR-p: 4.97*10
) and
(FDR-p: 4.98*10
), stood out as promising candidates.
is involved in the preservation of Retinal Pigmented Epithelium (RPE) homeostasis while
and
are both involved in visual signal transmission. With regards to TR, four genes:
(FDR-p: 4.09*10
),
(FDR-p: 6,52*10
),
(FDR-p: 8.34*10
), and
(FDR-p: 2.10*10
), were considered promising candidates.
is reported to be associated with Retinitis pigmentosa;
is reported to regulate choroidal vascularization in Age-Related Macular Degeneration;
is involved in RPE homeostasis regulation;
is reported to regulate lacrimal gland function.
Overall, these results provide novel insights regarding a complex phenotype (i.e., CVDs) in an underrepresented population such as Silk Road isolated communities.
This paper examines architecture for tourism, focusing on destination design. In the past forty years, tourism destinations and their impact have been affected and transformed by emerging topics such ...as the impact of social media and the necessity of sustainable indicators in the tourism industry. In the global panorama of ongoing tourism transformations, Saudi Arabia has recently established new governmental opening regulations that started in 2019 for visitors and tourist visa entry. The country is facing a rapidly transforming economy, and new destinations for tourism will impact the country’s growth in the coming years as part of the Sustainable Destination Program in alignment with the ambitious targets of the Saudi National Vision 2030. The adopted methodology of the study compares selected parameters of two significant Saudi Arabian case studies, AlUla and The Red Sea Project (TRSP), for the ongoing sustainable tourism destination development of planned tourist giga projects. According to the findings, AlUla and TRSP demonstrated an intense commitment to sustainable tourism through their efforts concerning protected areas, environmentally friendly transport, and significant rewilding and reforestation. The research’s conclusion emphasizes Saudi Arabia’s commitment to innovative thinking, long-term growth, and sustainable tourism. The study’s implication is primarily suited for destination design; it suggests potential applicability even in smaller-scale tourism development projects or additional comparisons in sustainability design approaches in diverse contexts, particularly in the MENA region.
The use of plant protection products (PPPs) has become fundamental to guarantee excellent field productivity. Nevertheless, their usage presents critical issues, such as the quantity of substances ...used, the relative toxicity, and the contamination of nearby fields caused by atmospheric drift. This study focuses on the characterization of aerosol droplets of PPPs produced by spraying a chemical marker, fluorescein, with an orchard airblast sprayer equipped with conventional hollow cone (HC) and anti-drift air inclusion (AI) nozzles, using a wind tunnel as a controlled environment. A particle/droplet image analysis was employed to study the droplet production of the nozzles, while a liquid chromatography tandem mass spectrometry (HPLC-MS/MS) analysis allowed us to evaluate samples collected using a cascade impactor located at 5 m, 10 m, and 20 m from the emission point. Overall, HC nozzles are very accurate at producing specific drop size distributions (DSDs), while AI nozzles produce a much wider DSD, concentrating the largest part of the distributed volume into droplets of a larger size. The marker concentration was much lower for the AI nozzles compared to the HC nozzles; moreover, the two nozzles show a similar trend in the coarse droplet range, while significantly differing in the fine droplet spectrum.
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•Trichopria drosophilae releases on Drosophila suzukii infested crops were performed.•In the field T. drosophilae attacked the pest up to 40 m far from its release point.•In ...semi-field trials the pest emergence from dropped fruit was significantly reduced.•The augmentorium technique enhanced the parasitoid action on the pest.
Biological control remains unutilized as yet in the framework of Drosophila suzukii Matsumura management. Although several parasitoid species attack the pest under laboratory conditions, information is lacking on their host-finding and dispersal capabilities in natural environments. We tested the effect of repeated parasitoid releases on D. suzukii populations in infested orchards. The pupal parasitoid Trichopria drosophilae (Perkins) was released on different crops at eight sites. Parasitism was monitored using traps placed at various distances from the parasitoid release point (RP). A second experiment was carried out under semi-field conditions to evaluate augmentation of the parasitoid. In both experiments, D. suzukii infestation was evaluated through fruit samplings, both from the plant, and from the ground. In the open field trials, T. drosophilae attacked D. suzukii in traps up to 40 m away from the RP, and pest emergence was significantly reduced within a radius of 10 m at seven out of eight sites. In the semi-field trials, parasitoid releases significantly reduced D. suzukii emergence from ground-sampled fruit, and augmentation enhanced parasitism, increasing the numbers of parasitoids emerging from host pupae. Although further field studies are required, these results suggest that T. drosophilae may be considered a potential biocontrol agent for D. suzukii.
The AgroForestry Innovations Lab (AFI-Lab) of the Free University of Bolzano-Bozen (unibz), in synergy with local farmers and machine builders, is launching a research thread investigating sprayer ...performance and drift mitigation strategies in the context of South Tyrol, Italy. Nozzle characterization via Particle/Droplet Image Analysis (PDIA) is a stepping stone in this direction; the present work involves the use of an Oxford Lasers N60 shadowgraph to (i) gather a database of nozzle characteristics for future reference, (ii) interface the shadowgraph itself to custom Matlab code through the use of both raw and post-processed particle data, (iii) develop a methodology to evaluate nozzle performance, with a flexible approach toward the validation of future nozzle behaviour models, (iv) gathering expertise for internationally-recognized certification activities of new nozzles, and finally to (v) support and provide input for in-development sprayer performance models, aimed at drift prediction in support of wind tunnel activities for real-scale machine performance evaluation. A set of three conventional hollow-cone nozzles and their anti-drift equivalents have been analysed at two operating pressures in different portions of the cone. The results of the data acquisitions have been parsed and stored by an automated algorithm in Matlab and used to develop the code for the visualization and comparison of the droplet distributions. The work is closed with some remarks and future perspectives enabled by the choice of this type of instrument, especially the characterization of cone geometry and droplet density across the cone aperture.
The abandonment of mountain agriculture in Europe is a phenomenon that has been going on since the post-war period to the present day. This is because the hostile environment, more adverse climatic ...conditions, lower yields and lack of space have always favoured crops in flat locations. However, this has led to a more or less marked abandonment of the mountains by the local population. The BROTWEG project was born with the aim of reversing this trend by developing and providing the technologies for sustainable and mechanized cereal cultivation even in the high mountains. This in particular following a short supply chain system: (a) cultivation of cereals in small/medium plots by creating new technologies for mechanised seeding - avoiding the erosion-prone tillage - and harvesting on steep slopes up to 80%, (b) post-harvest operations (drying and milling) carried out directly within the farm, (c) bread-making. In this scenario, monitoring the crops, as well as the field yield, becomes very important and necessary to promptly respond to any issue and thus ensuring a successful harvest. In this work an attempt is made to estimate the field yield by means of spectrographic surveys, conducted with a UAV. The idea is to discern between crops and weeds by evaluating some vegetation indices: when the grain reaches the maturity its viability is very low, whereas that of the weed remains medium/high. Therefore, a low vitality in an area means high productivity since all the analysed space is suppose to be covered by only grain.
One of the largest and most felt problems of plant protection is the spray drift generated by agricultural sprayers, that is the movement of aerosolised plant protection product (PPP) outside of the ...target area. Understanding aerosol generation from sprayers is key to understanding their introduction mechanisms in the atmosphere and potentially their diffusion processes at regional scale. In this context, a joint study has been organised by the Agroforestry Innovations Laboratory (AFI-lab) of the Free University of Bozen-Bolzano (unibz) and the Department of Environmental Sciences, Informatics, and Statistics of Ca' Foscari University of Venice (UNIVE). The study aims to characterise the aerosol generated by an orchard airblast sprayer as a function of distance, correlating it with the droplets produced by the employed nozzles. Controlled amounts of a fluorescent tracer solution were sprayed by a commercial sprayer in the wind tunnel at the AFI-lab of unibz. The experiment was repeated with two sets of nozzles of the same ISO size class, conventional hollow cone and air-inclusion flat fan. The aerosol was sampled at several distances from the sprayer using a 12-stage cascade impactor able to collect the different droplet sizes independently. The current work presents the outline of the study and, specifically, the preliminary characterisation of the employed spray nozzles by Particle/Droplet Image Analysis (PDIA). The behaviour of the nozzles is represented by their drop size distributions (DSD). Five randomly selected nozzles of each type were characterised by an Oxford Lasers VisiSize N60 PDIA system on a dedicated nozzle test bench. The nozzles were tested under the same working conditions of the experiment. The DSD of the nozzles show reasonable uniformity, with slight variability due to the manufacturing of the nozzles. The next steps in the study are the characterisation of the same nozzles while mounted on the machine, to understand differences in performance, and the analysis of the correlation with the aerosol distributions in the tunnel.
The assessment of the deposited plant protection products (PPPs) is important for resource management as well as the prevention of off-target area contamination. Nevertheless, it poses significant ...challenges, not only in the field but also under controlled conditions. As a matter of fact, the standard methodologies to objectively compare the functional performance of sprayers require large amounts of time, and the results are not always repeatable. One of the major obstacles is the timely estimation of the deposited material, as real time assessment is ideally required. In this work, we propose an innovative approach based on resistive measurements to address this challenge effectively. Our method utilizes screen printed electrodes integrated onto the material collector for accurate and real-time measurement of the deposited material. By leveraging resistive measurement techniques, we achieve a precise estimation of the deposited plant protection products. Our experimental results demonstrate an overall estimation error of less than 5%, highlighting the reliability and accuracy of our approach. This real-time assessment capability offers substantial benefits for either laboratory testing of machines, in-field resource management and environmental monitoring, with the potential to enable prompt decision-making and mitigation strategies.
The investigation of the performance of agricultural sprayer through drift and deposition sampling directly on field is of extreme importance, especially in view of ensuring an effective and optimal ...administration of plant protection products (PPP), necessary to limit waste of products and damages to the ecosystems. This is however a time and resource-intensive activity, typically resulting in highly variable results due to the unpredictable and uncontrollable atmospheric and operating conditions under which sprayers usually operate. To minimize the measurement uncertainties while also simpli-fying the procedures and reducing costs, in this work we propose a deposition assessment protocol based on the spraying of two distinct tracer solutions, leveraging two well-known phenomena: one based on optical absorbance, and the other on electrical conductivity. Although the selected tracers, namely uranine and potassium chloride, are already extensively used in other applications for their non-toxicity to both bystanders and environment, very little is published about their use in spray drift applications; the results obtained on the test bench promise to reduce the experiment costs, simplify the measurement, increase the reproducibility and facilitate the test automation. A test bench for nozzles has been employed to deposit the solutions on a matrix of Petri dishes; the original weight of deposited material in each sample is used, after complete drying and redissolution in fixed amounts of DI water, to verify the conductivity-concentration and absorbance-concentration laws. The two analyses show promising correlations, justifying an extended test campaign through further experiments, more representative of the actual spraying systems.
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